


edge of shadow

by Sparrows



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: DRK-typical shenanigans, F/M, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Grief/Mourning, Miqo'te Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Post-The Vault (Final Fantasy XIV), if you squint you can see the glimpse of implied Thancred/WoL, this fic gets 100x better if you imagine arséne personafive's voice as fray's just fyi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25475464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparrows/pseuds/Sparrows
Summary: "I don't want this.""Nobody ever wants to be a dark knight. They do it anyway, when the time is right."In the aftermath of events at the Vault's summit, tired of her friends sacrificing themselves for her, the Warrior of Light flees from her family into the shadows of Ishgard.
Relationships: Haurchefant Greystone/Warrior of Light
Comments: 14
Kudos: 24





	edge of shadow

_A knight lives to serve. To protect. To sacrifice. There is no greater calling. Leave me to mourn, and give chase. For my son, and the nation he loved._

_Go._

V’rahna had scarcely heard Count Edmont’s fragile, whispered words over the sound of her own blood roaring in her ears. Now she leaned against the outer wall of the manor, trembling fists pressed to her lips as she struggled to control her breathing. She knew, in an awful and clinically detached kind of way, that she was still bloody from the fight.

She’d held his hands as he died, after all. She’d brushed his hair out of his face with these hands, had clutched at his body when others had tried to pull her away and wept and _begged_ him not to leave her too, to wake up, not to do this to her like Th—

A ragged sob came to her lips and V’rahna half-buckled, sliding down the wall and uncurling her fists to cover her face. The streets were, for a mercy, mostly empty; it was raining, a rarity in Ishgard even five years after the Calamity had shifted its climate, and the nobles of the Pillars seemed content to remain indoors. Thus there were no witnesses to her grief, save for the guardsman posted by the door, whose eyes she could feel upon her. Not unkind, merely... uncertain of what to do, what to say.

As though there were _any_ words that could heal such hurt. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

The front door of the manor opened and then closed again, and light footsteps sent V’rahna’s ears twitching. She was aware, dimly, of someone crouching beside her, a hand coming to rest against her shoulder.

“V’rahna,” Alphinaud whispered, “are you— are you well?”

 _What does it swiving **look like** ,_ she wanted to bite back; _does this look **well** to you?_ She found that the words stuck in her throat, however, trapped there by a tight band of grief that made it difficult so much as to breathe past the desire to cry.

“He wished to protect you,” the young Elezen continued, still speaking kindly. “He... when all others had forsaken us, Lord Haurchefant took us in. Our beacon of hope in a world of darkness.”

_Shut up._

“He did his utmost to raise our spirits, so that we might face our troubles with courage. With conviction.” Alphinaud’s voice trembled at the last, and he paused; V’rahna lifted her head from her hands and stared at him in disbelief.

_Don’t you dare. Don’t you—_

“So that we might face them as...” He took a deep breath and forced a smile, the expression weak and watery but there nevertheless. “As _knights_.”

The spike of anger that shot through V’rahna at that single word was like liquid fire pouring through her veins. She slapped Alphinaud’s hand away - uncaring of the way he recoiled and stared at her with a hurt look, clutching his hand as though she had physically injured it - and rose to her feet so suddenly it made her head spin. The anger was still there, a violent and simmering thing just under her skin, and when she opened her mouth it came spilling out like bile. Like blood from a wound.

“I’m _tired_ of my friends dying for me,” V’rahna hissed, spitting each word with her ears pressed flat against her skull. Hot, prickling tears sprang to her eyes, though she was uncertain if they were born of anger or grief or perhaps both at once. “And he shouldn’t have _had_ to. Don’t sit there and - and act like this was right, or _noble_ , or - or—”

“V’rahna, _wait_ —”

And then she ran.

The deserted streets afforded V’rahna the luxury of running at her full speed, the force behind each footfall and the sound of her sandals clacking against the wet cobbles underfoot serving to ground her in the moment. She heard Alphinaud shouting something after her but the words were indistinct, failing to register beyond the mixture of rage and heartbreak swirling through her thoughts.

She didn’t know where she was running to, only that she needed to put as much distance between herself and the Fortemps manor as possible. Ideally _without_ leaving the city, although she had half a mind to do exactly that. When she came to the stairway leading from the Pillars down to Ishgard’s Foundation, V’rahna took them two, three, even four steps at a time without breaking stride, a touch of aether winding down through her to keep her feet from slipping or her legs from buckling under the force.

In the Foundation there were people milling to and fro in the streets, Ishgard’s common-folk unable to shirk their duties simply because of rain or the oncoming night. It was not quite dark — _it had been sunset by the time we reached the top of the Vault_ — but visibility was poor enough that V’rahna had to slow her pace somewhat.

V’rahna ran through Saint Valeroyant’s Forum, and for a moment thought her feet intended to lead her to the Congregation. Ser Aymeric would be there, she knew, recovering from the wounds he had suffered at the hands of the Heavens’ Ward, and perhaps he might know what to do, might have something stronger than words to salve the wound she nursed in her chest.

But she continued on, moving through the Forum and winding through back streets and alleys and stairwells, continuing ever downwards. Ishgard was a gleaming monument built upon the backs of the poor and downtrodden, the disgraced and the lowborn; the Brume rose around her as she descended, manicured stone buildings giving way almost reluctantly to the crumbling, cobbled-together dwellings that marked Ishgard’s slum. It was a maze, a dense warren that doubled back on itself and twisted and turned and even, in places, stretched dizzyingly out over the bottomless chasm surrounding the city.

Having run nearly the full length of the city in under a bell, it came as little surprise to V’rahna when her legs finally gave out mid-stride, sending her toppling to the ground in some deserted dead-end alley. She lay on her side, half-curled with her fingers digging desperately into the dirt while she struggled for breath. Her lungs seemed unwilling to fill, both sides of her ribs burning with every gasp of air she managed to suck in. She couldn’t tell if it was from the pain or everything else, but hot and bitter tears sprang to her eyes and she let them fall, choking on each sob.

 _The great and mighty Warrior of Light, weeping on the floor like a lost babe._ The thought only made V’rahna cry even harder, curling tighter into a ball and pressing her forehead to the floor. Her shoulders shook under the force of her laboured breaths. _Now, do you intend to just lie there, or are you going to do something about it?_

Startled into silence, V’rahna sat up, the flow of tears halted for just a moment. The voice in her thoughts was not her own.

At the far end of the alleyway, a shape loomed from the shadows. Her heart leapt into her throat as she registered the cut of the heavy plate armour, the gleaming spires jutting from the brow of a full-face helmet, the vivid contrast between jet black and glinting gold. A pair of eyes shone from the visor’s thin slit. Fray leaned against the alley wall, arms folded over his chest and one ankle hooked casually over the other, looking for all the world as if he had been waiting there, patiently, for a long time. Perhaps he had.

“I knew you’d come running back sooner or later,” Fray said, his voice echoing strangely across the space between them and buzzing in V’rahna’s ears. Her mouth had gone drier than summertime back in the Sagolii; she swallowed thickly, but it didn’t seem to help.

_The moon hangs full over the Pillars of Ishgard. A few minutes ago, all was chaos and conflict, but now the air is perfectly still and cold enough to cause a shiver. From outside, the Tribunal looks tranquil enough; it is difficult to tell that a slaughter has just taken place within such sacred halls._

_“I can’t do this,” V’rahna whispers, staring down at the soul crystal nestled in her palm. The armour sits wrong upon her frame, the sword too heavy at her back; there is copper on the flat of her tongue, sharp and metallic to the taste. She is hoarse and cannot figure out why. Fray had been the one screaming, after all. “I don’t **want** this.”_

_She holds out the crystal towards Fray. He laughs, quiet and bitter. “No, maybe not,” he says, reaching out as if to take the crystal from her - only to wrap his gauntleted hands around hers and close her grip, pressing the crystal into her palm until its sharp edges prick at her skin. “But then, nobody ever **wants** to be a dark knight. They do it anyway, when the time is right.”_

V’rahna hadn’t seen Fray since that night. Not until now.

She stood slowly, her legs trembling beneath her like a newborn deer taking its first steps into the world. Her heartbeat seemed impossibly loud. At the other end of the alleyway, Fray unfolded his arms and stepped forward. The shadows pooling in the corners of the alleyway clung to him like a second skin before reluctantly peeling away as he stepped further into what passed for light this deep within the Brume.

“Have you made your choice, then?” The dark knight tilted his head; the helmet hid his expression from view, but V’rahna was certain that had he not worn it, she would have seen him raise an eyebrow, or perhaps smile. “Do you accept the path I offer?”

V’rahna tried to wet her lips before she spoke, but the effort aided her little. “If I do,” she said, barely able to speak above a whisper, “will I be strong enough to protect my friends?”

For a moment she was surrounded by sunset again. For a moment she could see the sharp blue light again, too bright to be real, like it had cut a hole in the world with its own passing. For a moment, time slowed, as it had seemed to before. This time, though, Haurchefant did not need to raise his shield. She stepped smoothly in front of him, clad in armour of the blackest night, and lifted a slender hand - around which swelled darkness, the perfect counter to the light.

_If only. If only I had come back to you sooner, or had never run in the first place._

“I can’t promise that,” Fray said. “It depends on how well you take to the path. It will require great struggle... and great sacrifice.”

With shaking fingers, V’rahna reached into the neckline of her tabard and pulled a pendant from beneath. Suspended from its leather cord by a fine web of knots, the soul crystal she had picked— _that Fray had pressed into her hand_ glittered in the gloom. A reddish light glowed at its core, caught and refracted along the fine etchings upon its surface. Mindful not to snag it upon her ears, V’rahna pulled the cord over her head, rubbing her thumb over the surface of the crystal before clutching it close to her chest.

It was warm to the touch, but not just from proximity to her own skin. The soul crystal seemed to pulse in her hand, slow and steady like the beating of a heart, or the dull ache of a half-rotted tooth. The feeling was totally alien compared to the gentle warmth of the bard’s crystal. V’rahna felt a sharp string of pain in her palm and looked down, uncurling her fingers, to find that the edges of the stone glistened with her own blood.

_Everyone who held that crystal came to conquer that fear, and became who they wanted to be. Will you be the next?_

V’rahna’s hand trembled as she thrust it out. “You said ‘ _when the time is right_ ,’ before.” She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself; the crystal continued to throb, sending flickers of sensation up her forearm almost to the elbow that stood just shy of painful. “Will you teach me?”

Fray laughed again, and this time he sounded pleased. He reached out his own hand, laying it over the top of her own, catching the crystal in their shared grip. “Gladly,” he murmured, and there was a warp to the way he spoke that made V’rahna’s head spin. He stepped closer, close enough that she could see the luminescent glow of his irises from inside the helmet.

“Close your eyes. Breathe deep through your nose - let the air fill your lungs, then let it pass from your lips. Slower, slower...”

_Listen to my voice. Listen to your heartbeat._

_**Listen for the other...** _


End file.
